The Ars readership would like to have its cake and eat it too.

A few days ago, we laid out a few reasons why we thought Apple's next Mac Mini could be even smaller than it is now, followed by some reasons why the Mac Mini is just fine the way it is, thank you very much.

As usual, the readers had quite a few things to contribute to this discussion, and there were plenty of you weighing in on both sides of the debate. We don't know if the Mac Mini is going to get smaller, but whatever Apple does it's sure to please and alienate our readership in equal measure.

In favor of a smaller Mini

A few of you pointed out that a smaller Mini might actually save Apple some money—using fewer materials in the computer itself and in the packaging could add up to substantial savings in the long-term.

"When it comes to the economics of materials, think about it: they will be using less metal/material to build those machines while maintaining decent sales/profits," wrote corgizilla-believer. "It is a win-win situation for Apple to keep reducing the size of those machines."

Commenter abhi_beckert thinks Apple could put an environmental spin on this move, too. "I think the only motivation Tim Cook would need is to reduce the size of the packaging, which would reduce carbon emissions during freight. Apple mentions this issue almost every time they make a product smaller, whether it's an iPod or Mac Pro, and the Mac Mini is their most environmentally friendly mac (it's all over the product description). When they can make it smaller without sacrificing anything, they will do it."

Others believe a substantial redesign is coming precisely because we didn't get a refresh in 2013. "The lack of any update suggests that they are planning on a more substantial upgrade," wrote Galatian. "The logical step for Apple would have been a Core i5 or i7 Haswell with Iris Pro, but they opted not to update the system. I guess they are planning a major overhaul."

Ars reader vnangia agrees. "I think it's pretty much inevitable. While there was indeed a change in the socket design that could explain why there was no Haswell launch, my reasoning is that there has been a delay in getting out the Haswell model because the industrial design team has been stuck working on the Mac Pro—hence the delay in getting out the revised Mac Mini. A simple socket change doesn't take that long to do—just see how quickly they moved from Nehalem to Sandy Bridge, for instance. As for power adapter size—if they went with something roughly the size of the "H"-SKU NUCs, there would be enough space to fit something the size of the 45W Macbook power adapter under the footprint of the NUC-sized Mini. That'd be enough for a relatively lower powered set of components, and Apple would happily do it."

Still others were indifferent to a smaller Mac Mini, and would be fine with it as long as it didn't give up the current model's expandability. Reader crawdad62 said it the most succinctly: "I suppose smaller is better as long as it doesn't have heat issues and the power supply remains internal."

Same size, more power

Those of you in the “leave the Mac Mini alone” camp would rather keep the box the size that it is and add more performance. As commenter LEONJERSEY says, “lose the HDD, better graphics and more RAM is all I want. Keep the case as it is.”

Some of you wanted the same thing, even though you realize that Apple doesn’t cater much to those who like to upgrade and customize their own systems. “The mac mini is small enough already, and I would like to see Apple pursue higher performance and upgradability rather than shrinking the size factor,” wrote rodalpho. “That said, like you pointed out in the article, apple often makes things smaller just because they can, and they are willing to sacrifice performance and upgradability to do so. So I wouldn't be surprised to see a NUC-sized mac mini when Broadwell releases.”

Others agreed with us about the advantages of the Mini’s built-in power supply. “A mac mini can be VESA mounted (via third-party brackets) just like these other products, which would be the primary reason for going smaller, and the internal power supply is a huge benefit,” wrote paradox00 “Even the NUC and Brix have introduced larger models to offer greater expansion. Once you get down to a certain size, there aren't many benefits in going smaller. The smaller desktop won't offer any different uses from the slightly larger desktop.”

As we noted, making the Mini smaller might necessitate a switch to smaller, more expensive laptop-style parts, but this might not be a good thing for the customers who buy the current Mini. “I could see Apple nuking 2.5inch HDDs as an option, which would save considerable space (aside from the PSU, that's basically where all the NUC volume savings come from) and telling anyone who wants a 'server' that they can buy an external disk enclosure and suck it up,” wrote fuzzyfuzzyfungus. “The complicating factor, though, is probably whether Apple cares about OSX in cost-sensitive environments ... If they still care about that, forcing SSDs and expensive drive enclosures on their cheapest, most lab-friendly OSX product will be an issue. SSDs have gotten a lot cheaper; but boring 80/160GB HDDs are cheaper still.”

Andrew Cunningham
Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue. Twitter@AndrewWrites